Science and religion

@Scattered,

>>How does one reason from the finite to the infinite?
How does one reason from disorder to order? Evolution.
>>Does it not always involve a leap of faith?
Knowledge and reason are an important part as well.
Rest assured that if you followed the path of science that I did, that the story would look different than the one told by religion. It is clearly recognizable as what appears to be the same story, but necessarily being based on science, it is missing the magical component of the story. My story does not start with religion, it starts with biology. As such it does not take much literally. My work led a very high probability of God(s) and heavens which looked looked similar enough to the story of Christianity that I compared them. It did not at all start with religion.
If there is Original Sin, it is that we started as animals and must become more.
Remember the purpose of the pyramids. You mention death. What if I told you that there is probably a simple way to beat death? Wasn't that the purpose of the pyramids? That is an old old drive. If I tell you a way to beat death, a practical way (which means does not endanger survival of the human race as most methods of physical immortatlity would), do you think humans will use it? Simple, we make heaven... as had been done many times before.

1 Reply

@Scattered,

I hope these comments do not go too far back into the topic. Reading through all of this has been interesting.

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Uhhhh.... Is that a useful truth?
My kids come up with things like that and it is my responsibility to make sure they don't confuse truth with thought.
I looked up truth on Wikipedia and didn't find anything corrosponding to anything like truth being equivelant to imagination... Quite the contrary in fact.
If you want to say that any random thought is truth, then please suggest another word I can use to indicate thoughts that are generally factual as opposed to imaginary.

Well, it's true that mental states can be about cows jumping over the moon. At the same time, there is no physical state in which a cow jumps over the moon.

de Silento - You say that "here is a lot of faith in what we call science. For example, we cannot know about the beginning of mankind, or life in general. It takes just as much faith to believe in this as it does to believe in God."

The problem here is that we can investigate matters such as the beginning of mankind and life through scientific investigation. At least, scientists seem to think they can, and have, and continue to do so, presenting a great deal of supposed physical evidence and interesting theories. Is all of this research worthless?
You admit that "there can be no 'science', as we understand it, about God because science has to do with what we can know about the world around us." You go on to admit that God is essentially different from the "world around us" which science is concerned with. Obviously, then, belief in God and evidence from the world around us have very different support.
Why does science require just as much faith as God?

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We do have a couple of things to work with. If God exists, it seems that he is interested in humans. Can that help us? It suggests against the idea that God is toatally apart from this world.

I would agree that no is not totally apart from us, but my particular notions of God are a different subject, I'm just curious about God's supposed interest in humans.
If we can go so far as to say God is interested in man, is there any reason to think his interest in man exceeds anything else that exists?

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@Scattered,

Scattered, I've spent the last 3 years as a post-doctoral clinical fellow in Infectious Diseases at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health, and I did two years of research on inheritable determinants of human disease. Heredity is not "forbidden" in science, it's one of the most important and common subjects of study in all of science and particularly medicine.

If your idea of "heredity" is limited to the racial theories of Julius Streicher and Joseph Goebbels, then I'd strongly suggest you reexpose yourself to it.

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@Scattered,

How about you ask Dr. Watson about it. He might disagree.
Heredity is still a very touchy subject, because like it or not it leads to Social Darwinism which has led to some very ugly stuff including Joseph Goebbels. Currently there is no alternative conclusion.
It is examined in medicine and elsewhere. They ignore some of the inconvenient logical conclusions. I hear that The Bell Curve is very considered in universities, but anyway you cut it the conclusions are such that the politically correct can get very rightously indignant.
A new way of looking at it that has a different conclusion from the win-lose results of Social Darwinism is required. I came up with a win win view, but that is just another part.

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@Scattered,

I'm not sure how heredity leads to Social Darwinism. If you mean people will misunderstand the science and seriously adopt social Darwinism, this may very well be the case, but otherwise, I don't see the issue. I'm not very well versed on the subject, but what I do not see is social Darwinism gaining any real ground.

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@Scattered,

Social Darwinism is just the concept tht societies are involved in a form of Darwinian competition. The study of heredity strenthens that concept by defining racial based social groups. Social Darwinism is seriously enough accepted. By default, it is the foundation of any race war of which there are many, including to a large extent WWII. Durfur is a great example as is most conflict in the Middle East. Social Darwinism is generally not gaining ground though there are more wars currently than is usual in the modern world, but with population pressures, global warming and other pressures, it very well could. Part of the reason it is not gaining ground is that it is a forbidden subject in academia.
I mentioned that I found a way to modify the arguement from win lose to win win.

1 Reply

@Scattered,

Scattered wrote:

Social Darwinism is just the concept tht societies are involved in a form of Darwinian competition. The study of heredity strenthens that concept by defining racial based social groups. Social Darwinism is seriously enough accepted. By default, it is the foundation of any race war of which there are many, including to a large extent WWII. Durfur is a great example as is most conflict in the Middle East. Social Darwinism is generally not gaining ground though there are more wars currently than is usual in the modern world, but with population pressures, global warming and other pressures, it very well could. Part of the reason it is not gaining ground is that it is a forbidden subject in academia.
I mentioned that I found a way to modify the arguement from win lose to win win.

Social darwanism has always been one excuse the rich have used to feed upon the poor. Plato, among others, seem to suggest that the wealthy are wealthy because they are worthy. This may be true of societies, that they do better as a result of some inovation, or intelligence; but within a society it is an excuse for the society destroying itself. Humanity as a rule has limited adaptation to environment by limiting the environment. Our technology allows us to adapt to environments so that we do not have to evolve to them.

In the example of WWII we can see how darwanism in the hands of crackpots can result in great misery and destruction. Even in small ways the theory was proved wrong. Among my father's generation, the best and the brightest became pilots, and they suffered much more death. Great numbers did not live to breed, or pass their intelligence. Others, smarter yet, who were engineers and physics students may have lived because they were better, and essential to war production. I do not doubt that many of these suffered more from occupational illness. I think there is some evidence to show that when societies are stressed that they are more likely to produce homosexuals and schizophrenics, which may demonstrate sort of genetic logic, but as neither is likely to pass on what ever traits they possess directly the 'benefit' if there is one is not widespread.

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@Scattered,

Uh... Fido,
Your first paragraph seemed to relate to classes in a society. I didn't mention that and class warfare tends to be covered by economists, not biologists.
I think in your second paragraph you laid out a very good basic defense and support of the idea of Social Darwinism. Some of the best and brightest died, but the society survived and the opponents society perished. (of course something very unusual happened in history and we rebuilt their nations and peoples, but their culture definately perished.)
What is a more clear cut case is the war on Jews, Gypsys, Slavs and some other ethnic groups in WWII. Consider the Hutus and Tutsis. Consider the Africans and Arabs of Durfur. Think of the Christians and Muslims of Checkslovokia. That is Social Darwinism in action today. It is a current deadly affair. The reasoning is simple. I found a way to change the reasoning, but that is another story.

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@Scattered,

Scattered wrote:

How about you ask Dr. Watson about it. He might disagree.

How about I not ask someone who basically plagiarized his way to a Nobel Prize, and who has been reviled for his ethics within the scientific community for the last half century.

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Heredity is still a very touchy subject, because like it or not it leads to Social Darwinism which has led to some very ugly stuff including Joseph Goebbels. Currently there is no alternative conclusion. It is examined in medicine and elsewhere. They ignore some of the inconvenient logical conclusions. I hear that The Bell Curve is very considered in universities, but anyway you cut it the conclusions are such that the politically correct can get very rightously indignant.

1. Heredity is not taboo by any measure. In the National Library of Medicine there are more than 1.6 million scientific articles that have the word heredity as a keyword -- and this doesn't count all the others that study heredity without using the word (as it's rather imprecise -- very few articles use the word biology either). Then you go on to acknowledge that heredity is "examined in medicine and elsewhere." Darn right it is -- there are billions of dollars of funding that go to investigate questions of heredity.

2. The "Bell Curve" is sometimes used for data sets with a normal distribution, which can be Gaussian, Poisson, or several others, and which can be confirmed by tests of normality such as skewness/kurtosis and the Shapiro-Wilk test. Bell curves are not used for data sets that are not normally distributed. It's as simple as that. If policymakers want to pick cutoffs on normally distributed data sets, like implementing policy based on x standard deviations from a normally distributed mean, that's only a statement about the policy and not about the underlying data set. A bell curve is merely a description of a set of data that has certain statistical symmetry -- there is no inherent value judgement in it.

3. Social Darwinism is not the result of heredity research. It's simply a way that modern antisemites (and others) have rationalized their policies. But racial antisemitism unambiguously existed in the 15th century, when the Inquisition in Spain became convinced that conversos (Jews who had converted to Christianity) were still racially Jewish, and were a social contaminant. The Nazis adopted the language of Darwinism, but there was little difference -- it was just a rationalization to justify purging what they deemed a social contaminant.

4. You worry that Social Darwinism is an unavoidable implication of heredity research. I beg to differ. With heredity research we are able to screen children for cystic fibrosis, phenylketonuria, and sickle cell anemia, thereby implementing life-saving interventions during infancy. With heredity research we can match you for a bone marrow transplant for your leukemia. This is the EXACT OPPOSITE of Social Darwinism, because we're allowing the "weak" to survive and take part in our society.

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@Scattered,

The use of social value to justify superiority of one man over another has been man's own desire as far back as recorded. It has been man's nature to dominated one another like a dog pack for a larger share of the kill, and bring one in servitude to the other, using the mind set of the society, has not changed. And unfortunately, will not. One who is gifted is gifted, not superior. But that does not stop those who are gifted from using their gift to dominate his neighbor. Where as he could use the gift to help his neighbor.

It's what a society values most that it shall follow, or pursue.
Man is trained to impose his will on another, look at the game of football. A game like most sports that illustrates despite bad calls by refs or the bounce of the ball and team member mistakes you are able to over come the will of the opponent and dominate. Which is rewarded and admired by others.

To use "superior race" or scientific data and know how, or religion, or tell them what they want hear, or fear of death and suffering one can cause the other, or even a simple bunch in the face, to justify superiority to dominate the face of the planet, is nothing new at all.
************

If your looking for where science and the bible meet you might look to the first verse of Genesis.
It's seems apparent that religion and science have nothing in common other than proclamation of what is according to those who see what they believe as true for what ever reasons. Science approaches it with life is the result of existence and the bible says that existence is the result of will of eternal life.
According to the prevailing paradigm of the science community there are five basic parts, or elements, of the cosmos/existence, (all things). Time, energy, space, matter, and something that started it (now being considered the big bang). The first verse in Genesis.

In the beginning (time).
God (something that started it).
Created (energy).
The heaven (space).
And the earth (matter).

So does existence exist because of the reason for it, or does the reason exit because there is existence? Surly the reason can exist without existence but existence can not exist without the reason for it's existence. If existence had no reason then how could it exist? For existence is merely the manifestation of the reason.

There must be purpose; for life acts with purpose, which is, to live. If there where no purpose there would be no order at all. Thus an environment that could not execute life or respond to the presents of life nor act to continue living, or give life.

It seems that science says knowledge is acquired through experience and only exists in that which has learned. Believers say knowledge is given and was always there, and is revealed by the will of eternal Life which is to live and give life. So does knowledge exist because is was learned by existence? Or was knowledge always there, and can be learned by the living?

1 Reply

@dpmartin,

dpmartin wrote:

There must be purpose; for life acts with purpose, which is, to live. If there where no purpose there would be no order at all.

This is a teleological statement that might make sense to Aristotle, the 2300-year old master of all rational teleologists, but the statement is wholly and completely incompatible with science as we know it in the last 400 years since Sir Newton's feet were gravitationally attracted to our planetary mass. Aristotle believed that the heavenly bodies naturally moved in circles, it was their end to move that way. Newton showed that planets move in straight lines, but due to gravity change direction in every instant and the end effect is circular. In other words, from Newtonian mechanics on through to the present, we understand that there is no purpose (from a scientific point of view), there is only mechanism.

Living is a process, not a goal. Life is a condition, not an end. Purposes are things that we rationally project onto longitudinal processes, but purposes do not fall within the domain of scientific speculation or inquiry. We can talk about mechanisms, or function, or interactions, or roles, but we cannot talk about purpose in science. If your aim is purpose, then science isn't your tool.

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@Scattered,

Aedes,
You want to invalidate Dr. Watson. It doesn't change what happened. It also makes me careful of what you use to support your arguements.
Cool enough, but the way you say it, it seems you think it started with antisemitism. I think that is a bad thing because then it makes zenophobia look like some new thing and an abbaration. You are quite right that Social Darwinism existed before somebody thought up a theory about it, but it also existed before there were cities. Tribes and clans have fought through history, worldwide. No, it's the norm and is for a rational reason including genetics. When tribes mix, there is only an advantage after the long time it takes for effective hybridization between the tribes. Most of the time, under natural conditions, it is bad for tribes to mix. The first generation hybrid is stronger, but after that the generations tend to be weaker than the parenals. Religion has been one of the primary tools for keeping tribes apart, especailly in a multi-cast society. Western society is primarily 4 tribes hybridized together starting with the tribal groups of Sumeria, but it took a long time.
What you are talking about with fighter pilots and individual medical survival is about individuals, that is the level of normal Darwinian Natural Selection. Social Darwinism is an aspect of apparent selection at the level of groups. One group lives, one group dies. Group selection is a far more complicated and debatable than individual natural selection.
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dpmartin,
Wow!
>>There must be purpose; for life acts with purpose, which is, to live.
Now that is one I go for. That is what I base all my studies in biology on.
Reading the rest, I see some great views, but I'm not entirely which ones you most subscribe to.
...
You seem thoughtful. Question. There was once a universe and in it evolved "humans". They prospered and grew and became so advanced that they were unimaginable to us. If they created a universe, perhaps hearalded by a big bang, with the intention that it would be a good place for humans and other forms of life to develop, would that make them a God? How about if they sometimes assisted "humans" by teaching them moral lessons?
Just a scattered thought...

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@Scattered,

I don't entirely invalidate Watson -- but he is one of the last people whom I would regard as a flagbearer of scientific ethics.

I certainly don't contend that it starts with anti-Semitism -- I just happened to be able to name a specific example of Social Darwinism from 15th century Spain as a counterpoint to the obvious post-Darwin anti-Semitic Social Darwinism under the Nazis.

Genetic screening operates at the level of the population -- while it will variably affect the lives of individuals, the net movement for cystic fibrosis patients is that they now mostly survive to adulthood, whereas even just a few years ago only 50% would make it until 20. Healthy women with CF can (and do) have children, and pass on that CF gene. (Men with CF are sterile). So as a population, we have more adults with previously fatal genetic illnesses. I was taking care of a 38 year old sickle cell patient last week who has a 16 year old daughter who also has sickle cell. So at the level of the population, we're making it possible for genetically ill patients to survive and take part in our society.

Anyway, my point is that genetic screening runs counter to Social Darwinism, because it validates the presence of genetically "weaker" groups (as defined by a common genetic characteristic) in our society -- and it validates the expense of resources and time to support those groups. And these are racially targeted too, because, for example, sickle cell is far more common among blacks and CF is far more common among whites -- so screening is directed accordingly.

I've mostly said my piece about life having purpose. But again I find that biologically unsound by virtue of its open teleology, which is simply not part of biology -- and teleology is specifically taught out of students in the sciences.

Life is self-sustaining. Animals preserve themselves by eating, fleeing, fighting, reproducing, etc. But that doesn't mean that living is a purpose -- it means that entrenched in behavior and biology are traits that foster self-preservation -- that need not be consistent with purpose. And lest we forget, things like mushrooms and ferns and seaweed are alive too -- i.e. nonsentient, vegetative organisms. Is their purpose to live? If so, you can just as easily say that the purpose of a dead squirrel is to be dead, or the purpose of a rock is to be a rock.

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@Scattered,

Hmmmmmm.
I admit that survival is an instinct in animals.
Could it apply to plants? Their purpose is not to live, it is to survive in an evolutionary sense. Is there a difference there?
Is there a difference in the purpose of concious survival?
Interesting... In a way you seem to be saying that there cannot be a purpose to survival. Cannot survival be a purpose? (To me, survival always means in an evolutionary sense)

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@Scattered,

Survival can be a purpose if you're self-consciously doing somthing with the intention of surviving.

But in an evolutionary sense survival is a result, not a purpose. Organisms survive because they are able to biologically survive under the conditions in which they live; and vice versa. And the same is true for successful reproduction.

And that's why even in conscious, "rational" beings as ourselves, we have irrational feedback processes to get us to do things that are advantageous. As a general rule adult humans don't have sex for the purpose of reproduction (or at least not only because of that) -- they have sex because of all the instinctive factors that attract them to one another and the physical pleasure of the act. In other words, the process of reproduction happens because our bodies are biologically "incentivized" to do it, not because it's our biological purpose -- and that's similarly why humans have sex even when they clearly do not want to reproduce, or even when they clearly can not reproduce. By the same token we are biologically incentivized to eat because it's uncomfortable to be hungry but satiating to be full. And we are biologically incentivized to sleep, breathe, and everything else.

Some of these are unconscious -- like our autonomic nervous system which respondes compensatorily to changes in blood pressure or blood volume or whatever. But it's the same thing -- we raise our heart rate in response to low blood pressure because there is a neurovascular reflex that stimulates it -- and the end effect, the apparent purpose, is to raise the heart rate to sustain our cardiac output -- but this happens via an unconscious reflex, not with an end effect in mind.

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@Scattered,

OK, that's all cool, but
>>self-consciously doing somthing with the intention of surviving
In a way, this suggests I should ask when are we conciously doing it verses unconciously. That would lead to Maslow, self awareness and other things, racheda, racheda, racheda... So that seems to not be a problem.
I guess then it's a question of genetic programming as well. We are programmed to survive, no doubt. I call that faith in humans. We can also make it a concious matter. Evolution and demographics suggest though that it will always be selected for to operate at an instinctual level. Hmmmm. Well, I have always said that a key will be self awareness, which will be true no matter how strong ths instincts.... Then again, I have said that the moral issue is birth control, because that is where the strategy of the instinct operates. Have sex, have babies. Maybe that's it. Channel reproductive instincts to soemthing that is highly conciously controllable. So look at demographics and see what is creating babies and why. Is it concious or instinctual. It seems to be the habit of family in a context of religion. A highly adaptive religion based on survival... Well, for whatever it's worth, it seems to follow the pattern I have been developing for a long time. ... Cool, I don't often get offered many thoughts or considerations worth the time to think about. Well, I guess that is why there is a philosophy BBS.

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@Scattered,

Yup, I think you have it right. To have sex or not have sex is a complex decision with many variables -- and there are three big ones these days -- the relationship aspect and how sex fits into an interpersonal relationship; the reproductive aspect and how intention / desire / lack of desire to reproduce fits in; and the risk aspect with things like STDs. It leaves a lot of room for moralization when these variables come into contact with religious institutions.

1 Reply

@Scattered,

Aedse
But as in the example of Newton, it toke insight, and understanding to even wonder about gravity, of which the knowledge was there all the time but do to his talent was able to not only have the insight but all the other skills, and the opportunity, to express his findings to others that they may not only understand but use. He did not make the knowledge, he learned it.

"Living is a process, not a goal. Life is a condition, not an end. Purposes are things that we rationally project onto longitudinal processes, but purposes do not fall within the domain of scientific speculation or inquiry."

I am presuming you would admit that you are alive at this particular time. If your trying to show that there is no purpose. Then would you not be doing that for a purpose? To show that there is no purpose. That is not just a mechanisms, or function, or interactions, or roles. To show that there is no purpose, is that a process, or a goal, is it a condition and not an end. Is it not a goal to show there is no purpose? Would that be a purpose, to show that there is no purpose?

It amazes me how some science wiz's can pretend they do not find, nor seek purpose in there pursuits, without realizing that in essence they are saying what they do has no purpose. For if there is no purpose, then there is no purpose in what they do, or think, or say, nor in the results of their findings. No offence Aedes it just don't stand to reason that one who lives and does for the purpose of, every day, and says there is no purpose. I mean you wiggle through traffic when your late for work for the purpose of getting to work with the goal in mind of getting there on time. Science or not. Engineering is the search for and application of the known, I always thought science was the search for the unknown and the never done before.
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Scattered

"You seem thoughtful. Question. There was once a universe and in it evolved "humans". They prospered and grew and became so advanced that they were unimaginable to us. If they created a universe, perhaps hearalded by a big bang, with the intention that it would be a good place for humans and other forms of life to develop, would that make them a God? How about if they sometimes assisted "humans" by teaching them moral lessons?"

I prefer this one...
If the universe was created, perhaps hearalded by a big bang, with the intention that it would be a good place for humans and other forms of life to develop, would the creator be God? How about if "humans" came to know God by the revaluation of God to "humans" as a "human" so that "humans" could become sons of God, prosper and grow and became so close to God it would be unimaginable to us?

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@Aedes,

Aedes wrote:

Yup, I think you have it right. To have sex or not have sex is a complex decision with many variables -- and there are three big ones these days -- the relationship aspect and how sex fits into an interpersonal relationship; the reproductive aspect and how intention / desire / lack of desire to reproduce fits in; and the risk aspect with things like STDs. It leaves a lot of room for moralization when these variables come into contact with religious institutions.

I bet you are great in bed. Do you always have the calculator turned on at least?

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@dpmartin,

dpmartin wrote:

"Living is a process, not a goal. Life is a condition, not an end. Purposes are things that we rationally project onto longitudinal processes, but purposes do not fall within the domain of scientific speculation or inquiry."

I am presuming you would admit that you are alive at this particular time. If your trying to show that there is no purpose. Then would you not be doing that for a purpose? To show that there is no purpose. That is not just a mechanisms, or function, or interactions, or roles. To show that there is no purpose, is that a process, or a goal, is it a condition and not an end. Is it not a goal to show there is no purpose? Would that be a purpose, to show that there is no purpose?

1. I am alive
2. I am trying to show that "living" is not a purpose of life
3. My purposes are not metaphysically tied to any absolute purpose. I have intentions behind deliberate actions, and the consequences I hope for are the purposes that I apply
4. Consciousness allows us to think of purpose. Without consciousness there is no purpose. I am interacting with you consciously and self-consciously, and I have purposes (for letters to appear on the screen that correspond to my thoughts, and for them to appear on your screen for you to become aware of my thoughts, etc). But my sinoatrial node, which tells my heart how fast to beat, is not working with the purpose of doing that because it's involuntary -- it's just firing because of a self-regulating biological mechanism.

Fido wrote:

I bet you are great in bed. Do you always have the calculator turned on at least?

I sometimes forget that some people aren't used to casually and non-judgementally chatting about sex, ****, piss, pus, phlegm, drugs, and rashes. I promise to make it PG-13 for you next time.

1 Reply

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